What’s Happening in Venezuela: 5 Facts After the Electric Attack

At 17:42 in Caracas, March 11, 2019, the Minister of Communication, Jorge Rodríguez reported that “only a few hours left to have a definitive victory against the electric attack”. After announcing a new non-working day for Tuesday, the minister denounced the total of five attacks against the Venezuelan electricity system in recent days, such as the explosions in an electric station at Terrazas del Club Hípico in Caracas and the fire in a Electric Substation of Acarigua. Rodríguez asked the population to take measures to save energy, such as not leaving light bulbs and not using air conditioners below 22 degrees, to consolidate the restoration of the system. On Monday afternoon it is estimated that light has returned, with limitations and some cuts, in 19 of the 23 states in the country. Only the states of Lara, Zulia, Mérida and Portuguesa are missing.

At noon, the National Assembly, in contempt, issued a decree without legal validity where, again, it blamed the Bolivarian Government for the power system crisis and called on the police to let people protest against “public calamity” “caused by the attack. Thus decreed ” a state of exception” that in this way the AN’s unconstitutional rhetoric opens the invocation of legal concepts such as the request for intervention under Article 187. In line with the call for a new mobilization for this Tuesday, Guaidó published a tweet endorsing a series of lootings reported in Maracaibo and Maturín. From Saturday, the Self-Proclaimed tried to take advantage of the accumulation of days of weariness, product of the attack on the electrical system, so that violent protests are enacted that revive their profile in the national and international debate on Venezuela, projecting their narrative of a “humanitarian crisis” “

In this vein, media such as El Nacional published pieces with eloquent titles such as: “Blackout in Venezuela: looting and despair after five days in the dark.” What outlines the anti-chavista strategy of over exploiting the weak points of the electrical system, affected by the attack, to extend the damaging effect on everyday life and to try to capitalize its consequences on the street. Since the beginning of the sabotage, the antichavismo has sought to install the idea of ​​massive deaths in hospitals and a chaotic situation in the country. The balance of this 11M Monday shows how the sabotage was designed to generate a cascading effect on the country’s geography that would make possible a precarious scenario in the course of the days, as can be understood with the street agenda called by Guaidó. In that sense you have tweet like the one below,

Obviously, the contingency plans of hospitals, in installing electric generators and transporting patients in danger, has removed the opinion trend of a mortality in public hospitals. It is expected that in the next hours the same thing will happen regarding the distribution of CLAP boxes and distribution of water in the geographical areas of the greatest impact due to the attack. In this sense, the effectiveness of these measures depends on increasing, or reducing, the objective conditions for antichavismo to mobilize discontent for the situation arising from the attack (especially in relation to the water supply). Last week, the financial medium Bloomberg published a piece where it referred to the order given by Washington to Guaidó to return to Venezuela and don’t go to Europe, and not lose his momentum. Obviously, this depends on precarious living conditions of Venezuelans to force them to bend to their agenda.

This shot shows a chavismo in the offensive to consolidate both the stabilization of the system and the normalization of the situation on the streets. On Sunday, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López described the attack as “accurate and devious”, which reveals an unprecedented magnitude that will continue to show its true dimension over the course of days. In that sense, the progressive normalization of the country puts as an axis in dispute the possibility that Venezuelans continue with their daily lives. The antichavismo on its side seeks to impose a total paralysis of the country through force (embargo, sabotage, etc.), and against that (paralysis) is what the Venezuelan government and Chavismo are facing. The balance of Monday is otherwise positive as long as it tends to only four states of the country still being affected by this attack,

Donate ZCash to orinocotribune

Newsletter

Email address:

Leave this field empty if you're human:

About Us

The Orinoco Tribune is an independent news outlet specially designed to provide relevant progressive information about Venezuela in form of news articles and opinion pieces for English speakers around the world.

We are a group of Venezuelans committed with the progressive perspective that have lived abroad for several years and because of that we understand the need of information in other parts of the globe and we can provide information with Venezuelan seasoning for global audiences.

We will defend the causes of the less privileged, the working class and peasant movement, the anti-imperialists and those that has been deny access to the media.